All in the Timing

by David Ives

The world according to David Ives is a very odd place, and his plays constitute a virtual stress test of the English language -- and of the audience's capacity for disorientation and delight. Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."

At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Humor, Fiction, Comedy, Contemporary

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1994

About the author

A contemporary American playwright whose plays often consist of one act and are generally comedies. They are notable for their verbal dexterity, theatrical invention, and quirky humor.

He earned his MFA in Playwriting from The Yale School of Drama. A Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, David is probably best known for his evening of one-act comedies called "All In the Timing". The show won the Outer Critics Circle Playwriting Award, ran for two years Off-Broadway, and in the 1995-96 season was the most-performed play in the country after Shakespeare productions.

Reviews

[Ali Mousavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

سه نمایش اول عالی بودند. چهارمی متوسط و آخری خوب.
در عین سادگی خیلی بامزه بود! کاملا می‌شد وودی آلن رو توی بعضی جاها حس کرد و اشاره ای هم بهش شد.
اولی رو که خوندم پیش خودم گفتم کاش من این رو نوشته بودم و می‌تونستم اجراش کنم!

[MacK · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am well versed in the works of David Ives. I spent the better part of my high school weekends in Montana classrooms watching his short scenes enacted by a hundred or so peers and did more than a few myself. His first collection, All in the Timing, is a marvelously compendium of wit and wisdom that not even the worst, most tumultuously pubescent teenage reader can ruin. Sure Thing, The Philadelphia, and Mere Mortals are the brightest stars in this collection, but other, more inventive plays like Variations on the Death of Trotsky, Seven Menus and the hyperactive Mamet satire Speed-the-Play are interesting studies as well. Each piece hangs on, as the title suggests, deadly accuracy in the timing of lines. When you read it with a carefully selected cast in your mind it is ten times as enjoyable as a network sitcom and better than all but the most inventive big-screen comedies. I spent weekend after weekend watching them performed, I could very well continue to do so for weekend after weekend to come.

[Liralen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodness. What a ride. I read the six-play version, not the fourteen-play version, as part of an ongoing set of pandemic-style table reads. We lucked out and read these over two weeks when attendance was low, which was perfect for plays with only 2–4 characters.

Let's see:

"Sure Thing": So many bells. I'd love to see a modernised version of this—not because I think it doesn't stand up to time, but because I'd be interested to see what would change and what could stay the same.

"Words, Words, Words": Monkeys and typewriters and can you guess where this is going...? Probably my favourite of the plays.

"The Universal Language": Probably the best part of this is that someone compiled an Unamunda dictionary.

"Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread": Okay, apparently it helps if you know who Philip Glass is, and also if you realise that there's a full score for this play at the end. Definitely allowed for some chaos in the table read, but I'd love to see this performed for real, with actors who know what they're doing.

"The Philadelphia": A close second for favourites. Begs the question of what it feels like to wake up in a Tokyo, or a Berlin, or a Middle of Nowhere...

"Variations on the Death of Trotsky": One that sent me straight to Wikipedia for context. This seems like one that only works in this very short form, because the variations are often so slight, but quite entertaining as it is.

[Michael Pronko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short plays are absolutely brilliant. I find myself bursting out laughing, restraining myself only to marvel at the cleverness and sink myself in deeper to the drama. I use one of these plays "Sure Thing" as a kind of intro to postmodernism in one of my classes. Students often choose it to write about it (amongst many other choices of American Literature). He's very, very funny, and the hilarious situations the characters find themselves in explore so much about modern life. A great and very funny read. I just reread these all again and feel restored to humanity.

[Brandon Wicke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great quick-moving often hilarious short scripts, perfect for scene studies or quick turn-around productions. Some (words words words, variations on the death of Trotsky, Sure Thing) I would love to bring to young performers, as I remember loving them in highschool. Many of these pieces would be worthy of a production, and I’m happy to finally add them to my script library.

[lids ☆彡 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a variety of plays, but the main 7 are really the standouts (though i’d like to give an honorable mention to “a singular kind of guy” which is a very funny 3 page monologue). At its best, it’s witty and unique, and at its worst, it’s reference-heavy and requires a lot of buildup.

[Roderick Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six wacky one-acts...A delight.

[Ambrosia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a gift from a friend, and while I enjoyed reading it, it definitely illustrated to me why I don't spend a lot of time reading plays any longer - I haven't cultivated that sense of directorial vision, capable of considering multiple possible presentations simultaneously, and doing so is a lot more mental work than just reading a novel. Still, my benefactor asked for my thoughts, so here they are:

--The concepts behind "Sure Thing" (where two strangers navigate the tricky waters of a coffee-shop conversation on the way to genuine connection, with a gong helpfully sounding whenever one of them missteps) and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread" (a musical number playing on the eponymous composer's stylistic quirks and nihilistic sensibility transposed into a completely banal setting) both made me smile, although I wonder how many people the latter would really play to outside of particular demographics - surely lots of theater-goers haven't seen Koyannisqatsi.

--"Words, Words, Words" (in which three monkeys with typewriters serve as a metaphor for the blind human push toward art-making) struck me as a little precious in its conceit, but could work with a good enough director/cast.

--"The Universal Language" (in which a con man sells lessons in his invented "Unamunda" language to a woman suffering from a stutter, only to find such joy in teaching it to her that he falls for his own con) surprised me in its earnestness; I'd thought that I had pegged the collection as rather more postmodern cynicism, but it was oddly touching all the same.

--"The Philadelphia" was more straightforward, didn't outstay its primary joke, and made me genuinely laugh. ("I've been in a Cleveland all week. It's like death, but without the advantages.")

--Weirdly, "Variations on the Death of Trostky", which seems to be the one most people remember from this collection, didn't do a lot for me as written; I think that may be the lack of directorial eye speaking. I felt like I was missing something, whether from the direction or political context or simple lack of familiarity with 1930s Russian socialist philosophy.

Still, on the whole, I enjoyed the collection, and would totally audition for the part of Dawn in "The Universal Language".

[Aaron Piccirillo · Rating 2 out of 5]

“I don’t think language is just music. I believe that language is the opposite of loneliness. And if everybody in the world spoke the same language, who would ever be lonely?”

this was just boring… like the first play was good but then all the rest of them were too long and had no point to them. there was no common connection between any of them and none of them served a purpose or had a plot to them. like if you want to have a bunch of “weird” one acts at least make them have a point or be interesting and not repeat the same joke over and over. there were some okay parts in it but i was just bored for most of the time. also fuck woody allen anyways.

[Benjamin]

While I was in Chicago for Christmas, my girlfriend's parents took us all to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to see, of course, Moliere's School for Lies, adapted by David Ives from The Misanthrope. It was hilarious and silly in the way that Moliere is; for instance, one suitor to the heroine explains that his major accomplishment is being quite stupid; and the whole play wraps up neaty and tidily.

But in the Ives adaptation, there's some extra zing in those zingers, whether it's the anachronisms (someone makes the literary allusion to a "peak on Darien," which later gets confused with "Darien, Connecticut"), the Mamet-esque swearing, or the rapid-fire pace.

The play gave me a strange urge to revisit David Ives's short plays, some of which I read or saw (or possibly acted in) in high school drama club or speech and debate. Turns out, I only knew a few of these fourteen plays, but they're very much how I remembered them, even the ones I'm reading for the first time. If you're reading for plot and characters, you may want to look elsewhere; if you're reading for witty banter and humor, enjoy, since this is tailor-made for you; and if you're reading for deep themes, well...

Read all together, Ives's short plays do show some very close thematic connections. Many of the plays explore the same issues: infinite possibility, especially the infinite possibility of human interactions--and how those interactions can be frustrated/frustrating.

For instance, the most commonly performed play (where I come from) is his "Sure Thing," a dialogue between a man and a woman where a bell rings each time one of them says the wrong thing--"I have a boyfriend, I admire Trotsky, I don't like early Woody Allen films." These two talk until they get it right and swear undying love.

And so it goes: "The Universal Language" is a dialogue between two people speaking a made-up language to hide their stutter, but who end up finding each other. Other plays have less to do with human love, like "Words, Words, Words," where three chimpanzees try to bang out Hamlet while commenting (randomly) on the nature of art, life, and the big issue, the infinitude of chance.

The plays are all funny and interesting, even the dramatic ones that seem to have more to do with love fading or struggling, like "Long Ago and Far Away," where a couple are about to move, but the wife's cold feet lead to a fight and some time travel. So even when he's being serious, Ives reaches for metaphor, unreality, invention.

[Jon Hewelt · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I liked "Ancient History" a lot more this time around. The emotional whiplash from witty to outrage IS effective, but for a lot of these plays, it feels like David Ives's rhythm is off: ironic, considering how musical and rhythmic his dialogue can be. It's probably better in performance, but even then, every play feels like it has a beat or two that just goes too long, an emotional moment that gets cut off by snark. And it's like . . . that's part of the dance, I know it is. Going back to "Ancient History" again, Jack and Ruth's relationship is unsound in part because they can't have honest conversations: everything goes back to a joke, a routine, a supposed mutual understanding. But that's the characters themselves. The structure of their conversation is up to Ives and, at least for me, it's got this up and down, start/stop that's awkward and frustrating but also, unintentionally, distant.

Last time I read this, I wrote that these plays seemed to be written for a certain class of people at a certain time in history with a certain understanding of the world. That still feels true, especially when it comes the social graces around expressing emotions. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Ives's work, conceptually and ideologically, but it's the "too clever by half" witticisms that keep them from being fully explored.

"Philadelphia" is still a gem, though. No notes.
---
Meh. When Ives is good, he's really good, but a lot of the time his dialogue is too clever by half. "Ancient History", in particular, comes to mind. The script goes to some really deep, thoughtful places, but inconsistencies in character keep it from arriving where it wants to go.

I liked these plays a LOT when I was younger and first introduced to theatre. As I get older, I feel their limitations: these plays feel like they're meant for a particular class of audience for a particular place and time with a particular understanding of the world. Clever, I guess, if you get it, but I would prefer a stronger commitment to the bizarre premises Ives sets up, and less emphasis on witty banter.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cheated. I didn't read the two-act play included in this set. I started it and then felt that it was just too much Ives in one sitting.

Still, this is my first time experiencing ALL of the All in the Timing. I've seen "Sure Thing", "Words, Words, Words", "The Philadelphia", and "The Universal Language" before in previous drama classes and/or One Act plays. They're funny and enjoyable and the play on language is fantastic.

Some of these are simply amazing and demand an orchestration so precise that only perfectionists need apply (though they would all be driven crazy too). Take "Philip Glass Orders a Loaf of Bread" which is written in the style of Philip Glass. Or "Foreplay" which involves multiple times (scene 1, 2 and 3, if you will) all going on at the same time with particular overlaps and particular repetitions ("Foreplay" is based on the Fugue musical style).

Others are just meant as funny ("Sure Thing").

Then there's the odd duck ("Long Ago and Far Away") that would make David Lynch flinch. Or maybe Lynch wrote "Mulholland Drive" after watching a performance of it.

The bulk of this is great fun, though!

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the sudden I got into my head that I wanted to read this play that was in one of my college lit books. What I remembered was that two people were in a cafe and every time a bell rang they changed their conversation.

Not much of a starting point, so I threw these facts at ex-bf Matt who knows his playwriting - and he totally called it.

Some of the plays are super silly in a very 90's comedy kind of way, but I like "Sure Thing". It covers nearly every plausible outcome of two people meeting randomly in a coffee shop. They have multiple chances to get the whole thing right. Ding.

[Misti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six comic one-acts, each featuring a small cast and minimal sets/props. My favorite was "Words, Words, Words," about three monkeys with typewriters attempting to write Hamlet. My least favorite was "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread" -- I might like it better if I were to see it staged, but just reading it I can't see/hear how it's supposed to go. I don't think I would want to just stage these six in lieu of a full play, but I can see including some of them in a one-act festival or something of that nature.

[Mandy Stigant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased. Did a bunch of these plays for my Senior Studio in Drama at UD. They have a special place in my heart.

[Bbrown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mentioned to a friend a few months back that I’d read a ten-minute play collection, and he in turn recommended this work by David Ives. I certainly see the connection, since the fourteen plays here are, with a single exception, so brief that they can probably be performed in twenty minutes or less. However, reading All in the Timing was fascinating to me because it was like looking at the ten-minute play format, of which I’ve become quite fond, distorted by a funhouse mirror. Some of the plays herein are merely stretched out longer than they should be, but others are malformed monstrosities. I’m glad that I’ve read All in the Timing, but almost exclusively because of the lessons it teaches about how not to write a short play.

As I’ve noted before in my reviews of ten-minute play collections, one of the strengths of the format is that it’s difficult—though not absolutely impossible—for works that are so short to become truly unbearable. The plays in All in the Timing illustrate the steep dropoff that even a few more minutes allows for: The Universal Language, with its argot gimmick, might been bearable if it was over in ten minutes, but at probably twice the runtime the pseudo-language dialogue had already gone stale and started to grate. Brevity is your friend in this format, and all too many of Ives’s plays are overlong.

Another benefit of ten-minute play collections is that they contain works by multiple playwrights, which helps to prevent any individual authorial voice from getting too tiresome. Here, where all the works in All in the Timing are by Ives, the opposite is the case. This collection hits you full-blast with his recurring tone, motifs, and gimmicks, which is especially problematic because these features are so distinct, and many of them start off as annoying and go downhill from there (dialogue frequently devolving into scat singing comes to mind). As a one-off, the idea of a short play consisting of repeated iterations of the same scene might be entertaining, but when it’s done in at least a third of the plays in this collection, well that dog stopped hunting long before the end of All in the Timing. By the time I finished this collection Ives was cemented as a writer that I will avoid going forward, not a decision I’ve reached with regards to the other 50+ short playwrights I’ve read in more diverse collections.

All in the Timing also ends on a particularly bad note, with the last two works being a double-whammy of terrible, though in very different ways. The penultimate play Ancient History is longer than any three of the other plays in this collection put together, and is Ives’s attempt to depict the end of a relationship. It is bad. Everything about it, the characters, the jokes, the mannerisms, all of it is unbearable, and I do not get the sense that any of this is intentional on Ives’s part. I was ready for it to be over fifteen pages in, and so the next sixty five pages were torture. Equally bad is the last play in the collection, Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread. I don’t like the word pretentious, but if anything earns that description, this play does. I’ll admit that it might be interesting to see in person if the actors managed to get through all of it in less than five minutes, but realistically I don’t think a production would be able to move that quickly. By the time the performance stuttered past that five-minute mark, the last drop of amusement would be drained from the desiccated corpse of the play’s gimmick, leaving behind only an incipient headache. In any event, it’s an absolutely terrible play to read.

If I knew someone unfamiliar with modern theater, All in the Timing is among the last collection of plays I would ever give them. Unless of course I wanted them to think that modern theater is the realm of gimmick devoid of substance, the plays merely vehicles to showcase how clever the playwright is, which in reality isn’t even half as clever as he believes himself to be. Also none of them are funny. This work gets a 1.5/5 for me, rounding up because a distillation of what not to do is still pretty helpful.

[Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

One Act Wonders

If you don't know the playwright David Ives then you should get to know him. His introductory chapter is a delightfully funny collection of answers to common questions a playwright might get - without the questions, because the questions themselves are superfluous.

The book consists of 13 one-act and 1 full length plays.

Sure Thing: A man tries to introduce himself to woman reading a book. And says the wrong thing. Ding. Reset. They try again and again until they get it right.

Words, Words, Words: 3 monkeys, Kafka, Milton and Swift, trapped in a room with a set of typewriters by an unseen psychologist until they produce Shakespeare's Hamlet. They think of rebellion. Great dialog, extremely funny.

The Universal Language: With hat tips to When The Earth Stood Still, Yiddish and Monty Python. Student Dawn meets teacher Don and together they create an Esperanto like language that is both funny and swimming in culture. Getting the language is half the fun as most of it is just punned English.

Variations on the Death of Trotsky: The basis of the cover image, Similar to SURE THING in that it reuses resets to play out the same scene in different ways, this comic sketch on Trotsky's murder plays on the historic fact that Trotsky was killed by an axe on Aug. 20th 1940, but died a full day later. So how does a noted Bolshevik survive a whole day with an axe in his head?

The Philadelphia: Every had one of those days when you seem to be somewhere else. Al and Mark do. Once you learn the rules it's easier to manage, but can you get out?

Long Ago and Far Away: Memories in a New York apartment. Laura slips back in time and then is lost. Less of a comedy and more of an existential wandering.

Foreplay: Where miniature golf stands in for seduction. Ives employs parallelism showing 3 variations on a date with the same man and similar women but run simultaneously.

Seven Menus: Another excursion into resets, composed of 7 scenes at the same restaurant, but different times, but this time changing only one or two characters at a time; technically interesting.

Mere Mortals: Written in memory of his father, 3 sensitive construction workers on a beam come up with a fanciful theories as to who they really are - and one of them claim's he's the Lindbergh baby.

English Made Simple: A mockumentary in the style of those 1950s on how to behave films, in this at a party. Three roles - a narrator and the subjects: Jack and Jill.

A Singular Kind of Guy: A short monologue where a young man imagines himself to be a typewriter. Nothing special but one can make something out of this.

Speed The Play: Terrific parody produced in honour of David Mamet. If you're familiar with any of American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Speed the Plow or Glengarry Glen Ross you'll appreciate how Ives nails it. And if you aren't, it's funny anyway.

Ancient History: A full length two hander quasi romance sputtering to extinction. IMV its also also a weak entry with themes of love/lust and 30 somethings bickering over identity getting a bit old. The play is rooted in a clever couple who spend most of their time rooting each other, which makes the set simple - a bedroom. Jack, an ex-lapsed Catholic Peter Pan and Ruth, a Jewish Wendy are in lust with each other, but Jack peters out as Ruth wants to take him out of Neverland. Interesting use of repeated dialog but that's technique.

Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread: This one I didn't really get, but then I've never seen a Philip Glass opera performed or listened to one of his symphonies. Perhaps I should. Ostensibly Phil Glass goes into a bakery, buys some bread, gets his change and leaves. There are 4 parts and they all speak slowly and at the same time.

The one acts are Immensely suitable for as acting exercises, but perhaps some enterprising impresario could transplant the cinematic idea of a comic animation before the show and offer pieces like these as a preshow treat before a longer performance. Enjoyable just for a read as well.

[Edward Cheer · Rating 4 out of 5]

All in the Timing by David Ives is a collection of fourteen short plays- most of which fall into the "comedy" category, though there are some exceptions. From the minute I started reading All in the Timing with the play "Sure Thing" I knew I would enjoy it.

The main theme in this collection of plays is comedy mixed with tragedy that relate to deep philosophical quandaries everyday people have. Such as- "Does commitment to marriage ruin or help a relationship?", "What if you could go back and change all your mistakes?", and "How do we communicate differently even if we speak the same language?" The majority of the plays I read left me thinking about their concepts long after I finished them. Similarly to the Tao Te Ching, I didn't rush through all the plays. I took my time to let each one breathe, and they each left a unique impact on me.

Now there are some plays which aren't on the same level of quality as the others, in my opinion. Speed-the-Play is the old idea of taking someone's work and squeezing it into a short production, which makes it funnier... I guess. And Phillip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread was a simple joke spread far too thin for the play's length. They aren't dreadful to read, just a little more mindless than the rest of the plays with them.

If there's any specific winner that left me with the most to think about, it's probably "Ancient History". The only two-act long play and the longest of the bunch, it establishes a unique relationship at a very pivotal moment between the two partners and the questions it brings into the idea of marriage and being able to live with someone touched me personally. This is a play I would love to perform. "Long Ago and Far Away", "Seven Menus", and "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue" were some other stand outs that I enjoyed.

All in the Timing, while it has a few duds, still has a lot of soul and wit to it. The way Ives dances between such serious contemplative ideas and pure comedy is astounding, to say the least. I'm giving it a high recommendation. You will not be disappointed.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever since we saw Ives' trilogy of "transladaptions" at the Shakespeare Theatre Center in DC a few years back, I've been convinced that he is at the absolute apex of artistry among American playwrights. Nobody has more fun with words than this brilliant man. I used to offer some of the short plays in this collection of one-acts near the end of the year in class, as a reward after my students survived their AP Lit exam, and they were always a hit. This was, therefore, a re-read, but it sure was fun. *All in the Timing* and *Words words words* are a delight to read -- truly, an unforgettable, roll-on-the-floor with laughter experience when seeing them on stage!

[Bryan Magonigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite things to do is to wander around the library and just see if anything on shelves jumps out at me. This did, because of title (great title!), and I had never been aware of David Ives work. But I was cracking up reading all of these short plays. It almost made me mad, because short plays (15-20 pages) is something I have been working on a bit recently, and these were just about perfect, hence, bound to be influential in some manner. And there is nothing funny about the piece Ancient History. It cuts a right to the bone and compresses just about every relationship I have ever been in down to 80 pages, with a heartbreaking ending. Check it out.

[Tim Mountain · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love david ives so much! this is the second work of his i’ve read in a month! this collection may have even more range than time flies. “the philadelphia,” (which has long been one of my favorite one-act plays and is a poignant work of satire) made even more sense to me in a collection of plays about time, and “ancient history,” which i’d never read, shatters any conceptions that ives is just a smart guy who can’t write. i can’t wait to read more and more.

[Tiffany K · Rating 4 out of 5]

"When I was shaving this morning, I noticed a handle sticking out of the back of my head." I never wanted to be a fan of David Ives, but I guess I'm a fan of David Ives. "Sure Thing" is surprisingly sensitive, and while "Variations on the Death of Trotsky" works way better on stage than in print, it's still a charming read.

[Lise · Rating 5 out of 5]

arguably one of the wittiest playwrights of all time. i've performed in three of these (sure thing and words words words twice), and my goal is to play in all someday. also direct. i just love these plays a lot.

long reading time due to not reading all his plays at once.

[Nicholas Auletti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A jovial book full of spontaneity and ingenuity. These plays are rocket fast and hilarious. Ancient History shows his depth and brilliance, a slow burn of sorts, compared with the rest of the works, every play is particularly smashing.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly funny mostly one-act plays.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a sucker for off-the-wall, plays, tongue-in-cheek, funny, and thought provoking pieces; "All in the Timing" by David Ives delivers all in his collection of one act plays.

[Liz Swan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite one act was definitely The Philadelphia.

[Ben Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the plays were definitely five stars for me.

[Nasim]

به حز یه نمایشنامه‌اش، باقی رو دوست داشتم، مخصوصا اولی رو. خوب بود، کوتاه و روان.

[Squeric]

Short, punchy, inventive, funny.